Final Analysis (30 page)

“Didn’t you say you wanted to ‘gut him’?” Susan asked tearfully.

“No, God no, I never said that.”

“Didn’t you express absolute hatred of your father?”

“I’ve made mistakes. I have to live with that,” he said, anxiously rubbing his forehead. “It’s not easy that he’s dead, that I can’t say I’m sorry.”

It was just before 5
PM
when Gabriel Polk finally rose from the witness chair and waved good-bye to jurors. “See you later,” he said, exiting the courtroom.

“I call for a mistrial!” Susan shouted, citing her son’s banter with the jury.

O
n Wednesday, the crowd in the gallery had dwindled for Sequeria’s second witness, former Orinda Police Chief Dan Lawrence. The prosecutor had rearranged his witness list to accommodate Adam Polk’s vacation plans. He would call Susan’s eldest son later in the trial and forge ahead with testimony from members of law enforcement.

Lawrence, who was now the chief of a neighboring police department, was called to testify to the phone call he received from Felix Polk one week before his murder. During the call, Felix claimed that Susan had “threatened to blow his head off.”

Sequeira’s examination of Lawrence lasted just five minutes, however, Susan kept the law enforcement officer on the stand for more than one hour, arguing that Lawrence was an expert on police protocol and had expertise on domestic abuse cases. It seemed she was anxious to introduce jurors to the idea that victims of domestic abuse don’t always report incidents to police, thus explaining why she had not reported the alleged abuse she now claimed occurred throughout her marriage.

“Isn’t it true that women who are victims of domestic abuse back out, get scared, fail to appear, and make bad witnesses?” Susan asked Lawrence.

The police chief agreed, saying that Susan’s scenario was possible.

Seemingly pleased with Lawrence’s response, she next asked him why her husband wasn’t prosecuted for his knowledge of underage drinking parties at the Miner Road house. She also wanted him to explain how Felix’s influence with people in high places might have spared him from being charged.

Lawrence was unable to answer many of Susan’s questions, including a number that stemmed from a letter she wrote to Moraga police complaining about their search of her home after Eli’s arrest on felony assault charges. The letter alleged that officers had roughed her up,
handcuffed her, and threatened to tear her house apart, thus coloring her perception of the police department and leaving her distrustful of law enforcement officers.

Susan argued that it was her mistrust of police that caused her to flee to Montana—instead of reporting Felix’s murderous threats to authorities. She wanted to introduce her “state of mind” through Chief Lawrence. Susan had sent him a copy of the letter and was anxious to introduce it into evidence.

But Judge Brady ruled that she could not question the police official about the search warrant because he was not there. Susan’s accusations in the letter amounted to “hearsay” and could not be proven through this witness. Nevertheless, Susan ignored the judge’s instructions and continued her line of questioning.

Once Chief Lawrence had been excused, Susan questioned several more police witnesses, using their testimonies to present her theory that the sheriff ’s deputies had contaminated the crime scene by pouring water over Felix’s head to make the dried blood look wet and to make his death appear more grisly. “Doesn’t that look like a puddle of water next to my husband’s bloody scalp?” Susan asked Sheriff ’s Deputy Melvin Chamblee, one of the first officers on the scene. According to her, their carelessness and poor police work had resulted in a crime scene that looked much more like murder than the self-defensive struggle that Susan claimed it was.

She accused police of sloppy work, pointing out that officers were not wearing protective booties when they examined the crime scene. In addition, she also insisted that a photo of bloody footprints found at the scene appeared to depict two right feet, side by side. Meanwhile prosecutors maintained the footprint belonged to Susan and was the same size as the shoes found in her bedroom closet.

Dressed stylishly in a tan and green tartan kilt skirt, Susan looked lawyerly as she stood at the podium and thumbed through her papers. Displaying a photo of the bloody footprints found at the crime scene, she asked Chamblee if he saw, “two right feet.”

The deputy studied the photo, and then hesitantly agreed that it was possible, although he could not be sure.

To Susan, Chamblee’s uncertainty confirmed her claims of a tainted crime scene. Seeming pleased with her momentary victory, she shot a triumphant look at Sequeira. The prosecutor sat slouched in his chair, listening to Susan’s questions.

“What size shoe do you use?” he asked the officer on redirect testimony.

“I use size 11,” Chamblee replied.

“Size 11? And that’s men’s?”

The officer smirked, eliciting laughter from the gallery and from jurors. “Yes, men’s.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but do you wear women’s shoes?” Sequeira asked.

“Not to work,” Chamblee grinned. His response brought a half smile to Susan’s lips.

Nevertheless, the day was not without its challenges. Susan caused a ruckus when she complained that the overhead projector or LMO, pronounced “ELMO,” that both sides used to display photos and other exhibits was blocking her view of Juror Number 10. Susan had been watching this juror and another female juror over several days, seemingly convinced the two were quietly conversing during the proceedings. During a break, and with jurors out of the courtroom, she insisted that Judge Brady change places with her so that Brady could see the way her view was being obstructed.

Ordering Susan to the other side of the courtroom, the judge reluctantly stepped down from the bench and sat at the defense table, continuing her remarkable tolerance for Susan’s antics. Still, she seemed more a ringmaster than an arbiter of the law as she worked to tame Susan. It was almost comical to watch the nearly fifty-year-old woman in the flowing black robe plop down in Susan’s chair and study the jury box.

“Can I sit in the jury box to show you what view I’m not getting,” Susan asked the judge.

“No.”

After sitting in Susan’s seat, Judge Brady determined that her view was fine. But Susan continued to argue, telling the judge that it was a serious violation of her rights if she couldn’t see the jurors’ faces and
whether they were communicating with one another—which would be grounds for a mistrial.

“It will be moved after lunch,” Brady finally conceded.

Sequeira could not let the moment pass without voicing his objection. He told the judge that he had gone out his way to let Susan use the “ELMO” and to teach her and her assistant, Valerie, how to operate it. “Now she’s just trying to delay and control!”

“Objection!” Susan shot back. “Prosecutorial misconduct.”

Judge Brady closed her eyes and drew a deep audible breath. But the moment was quickly disrupted by Susan’s finger pointing. Now, she wanted Brady to punish members of the gallery for snickering.

“She’s just being obstreperous and obstructionist,” Sequeira barked, “for the record.”

“Prosecutorial misconduct,” Susan retorted, “for the record.”

Next on the stand was Sheriff ’s Deputy Shannon Kelly. Kelly was the officer who drove Susan to police headquarters the night Felix’s body was discovered. He said that during the ride, Susan was “unemotional” and claimed to have no knowledge of Felix’s death.

“I didn’t do anything,” Susan allegedly told the officer during the ride. “Are you sure it’s my husband? Did my son identify the body? Because his car isn’t here.”

Susan jumped up when it was her turn to question the officer. “Do you think if you had someone who was under arrest, and was accused of murder, sitting in the backseat of your car crying, and you had the music on, that you could hear them crying?” she asked from the podium.

“I could, depending on how loud the music was.”

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘crying inside’?”

“No,” Kelly replied.

The following morning, March 24, Susan was brimming with complaints, but her latest grievance was not immediately clear to members of the court.

“I’ve informed the court of the harassment and outright brutality I’ve been subjected to while in custody,” she told Judge Brady. Judge Brady looked bewildered as Susan detailed her alleged confrontation more than two years earlier with a court officer. She claimed the deputy
had pulled her from the courtroom and clubbed her on the elbow with a blackjack, thus breaking her arm.

“This incident has already been dealt with,” the judge advised Susan. “I believe the facts surrounding it are quite disputed, but anyway, what’s your point?”

“Instead of giving me medical treatment I was locked in a padded cell for hours,” Susan rambled on. “Denied painkillers for the broken arm…. I have been locked in cells with urine and feces on the floor, urine soaked mattresses, broken sinks.”

The judge was losing her patience and instructed Susan to “move it along.” Susan responded that she had been given “secret” information from an officer who claimed there was a conspiracy in the works. Susan was going to be “set up.” A deputy was going to claim that she attacked him, providing a reason to discipline and harm her, Susan told the judge.

“I want bail, or to be moved to another county,” Susan demanded.

Judge Brady was incredulous. “I can’t act on information based on unnamed sources about vague allegations on some future event,” she told Susan. “I need more evidence, statements from the officer, who has a legal duty to report that kind of information to his superiors.”

“I’m certainly not going to reveal my source,” Susan huffed. “This officer is trying to help me.” Again, Susan claimed that she didn’t feel safe and asked to be moved to another county.

When the judge denied her request, Susan angrily retorted, “Well, I’ve made my record.”

Sequeira was in court for the bizarre exchange but remained silent. Once the matter appeared resolved, he informed the judge of his problems with several witnesses. One was sick and unavailable to testify. He was having trouble finding accommodations for several others who had flown in earlier to testify and had gone home because of delays in the proceedings. Now, all the hotels in town were booked because of the NCAA basketball tournament at the arena in Oakland.

“I object,” Susan interjected. “This is a violation of my right to a speedy trial.”

Sequeira shot Susan a look, then asked the judge to instruct her not to discuss the State’s delays in front of the jurors.

But Susan exhibited her usual defiance and continued to voice objections.

“Mrs. Polk, DO NOT interrupt me again!” Judge Brady threatened.

To which Susan replied, “Well, you interrupted me.”

Susan was still ranting when the judge adjourned court for the weekend, stepped down from the bench and disappeared into the hallway. Proceedings would resume on Monday with testimony from more law enforcement officers. Among those scheduled to take the stand that week was the lead homicide detective, Mike Costa.

O
f all the police officers on the case, Susan was most interested in Detective Mike Costa. Susan watched from the defense table as the thickset detective climbed into the witness box Tuesday morning. Costa had recently retired from the force and had been flown in from his new home 100 miles away to testify. His first order of business would be to address the videotaped late-night interview he conducted with Susan at police headquarters on October 15, 2002.

Susan tried to get the judge to suppress the tape, claiming that she had not been Mirandized before the interview. When that failed, she insisted that the detective should have halted the interrogation after she complained of being “very, very tired” and “showed obvious signs of shock.”

Judge Brady denied her requests. “There was a clear understanding of the rights and a clear waiver,” the judge told Susan during a sidebar that morning. “It was probably the gentlest interview I’ve ever seen in a homicide investigation.”

Jurors waited in the hushed courtroom as Sequeira cued up the videotaped recording of the two-hour interrogation. Susan was now sitting at a table adjacent to the jury box so that she could watch along with the panel. The lights had been dimmed and the vertical blinds on the two windows on either side of the judge were pulled shut for the presentation.

As an image of Susan flashed onto the television screen, sobs could be heard from the defendant—emotional at the sight of herself in the
interrogation room. She was dressed in a pair of shorts and a polo shirt; an official police jacket was draped over her shoulders. The jury could not see her at the counsel table, but they could hear her whimpers, which grew louder as the videotape played on. She was so upset that her case manager, Valerie Harris, slid a box of Kleenex in front of her.

“Do you want to talk to me about what happened?” Costa’s voice boomed from the TV monitor.

“I do, and I am very, very tired,” Susan responded. She appeared toned and at least ten pounds heavier in the videotape and her hair was styled and neat—nothing like the overgrown, bushy mop that she wore to court each day.

“So am I. I haven’t been to bed all day either, but we have to do this.”

Susan wore a puzzled look, “What
did
happen?”

“Well, that’s what I’m hoping you can tell me.”

For the next two hours, Susan repeatedly denied any involvement in her husband’s death, even as the detective presented evidence to the contrary.

In the courtroom, Susan managed to quiet down and now sat beside Valerie wiping tears as jurors listened carefully to the interrogation tape.

“And you don’t know what happened to your husband?” Detective Costa asked for a second time.

“No.”

“Something happened, obviously. That’s why we’re all here. That’s why you’re here. You’ve had ongoing marital problems for sometime now, living in different places, money difficulties. So something happened, Susan.”

“That doesn’t mean that I killed him.”

“Was he seeing any other ladies?”

“I don’ t even know that he’s dead,” Susan replied. “All I know is I was lying in my bed reading and I heard Gabe get on the phone and ask to speak to a police officer, so I got out of bed and asked him ‘What’s wrong?’ He accused me of having…killed his dad.

“I did not kill my husband,” Susan insisted. “I am not that kind of person.”

Jurors listened to Susan dance around the detective’s questions, spending an inordinate amount of time detailing the couple’s financial
woes and how Felix had terrorized her during their marriage. Finally, she told Costa about the call she received from her husband while in Montana, alerting her to a judge’s ruling to cut her spousal support and award Felix custody of their minor son. “And I said, ‘Are you kidding?’”

Her reaction to the phone call was crucial to the state’s case. Prosecutors claimed that the conversation triggered Susan’s murderous rage, prompting her return to California and killing her husband. The videotaped interrogation was intended to demonstrate how she initially denied any role in the homicide—an outright lie.

On the stand, Detective Costa reported that his investigators had confiscated a number of incriminating items during their search of the Miner Road crime scene, including Susan’s computer, which contained her diary and the knife with “red dried stuff” on its tip. Although that knife would not match Felix’s stab wounds, the prosecution tried to show that investigators had come away from the Miner Road home with physical evidence that could be used against Susan.

During his testimony, Susan demanded that Costa be reprimanded for conversing with a juror while seated in the witness box. According to Susan, her case manager, Valerie Harris, had witnessed the exchange and Susan wanted the detective admonished.

Out of earshot of the panel, Costa admitted to Judge Brady that he had inquired about the climate in the courtroom. “Is it me, or is it warm in here?” he had asked the juror seated closest to him in the jury box.

“Don’t talk to the jurors,” Brady instructed. “You know better.”

But Susan couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Are you acquainted with courtroom decorum?” she asked the detective once jurors had returned to their seats.

Brady immediately reprimanded Susan for improperly raising the subject in front of the panel.

Despite her lack of experience in the courtroom, Susan did a commendable job of cross-examining Costa about his investigation. Her first line of inquiry focused on whether police had looked into her claims of spousal abuse.

When the detective replied that they had not, Susan went after him.

“It was a murder investigation, wasn’t it?” she asked derisively.

“Yes,” the detective agreed.

“And you didn’t check any of these things out?” Susan demanded.

“Not personally.”

“Did anybody?” Susan asked, firing off questions like a veteran lawyer. “Yes or no?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Costa replied.

“Were there any individual sources, not from the defendant’s mouth or pen, that you came across that gave you a domestic violence background?”

“No.”

“Not even Eli?” Susan asked, referring to her middle son.

Costa said he hadn’t heard any accusations, not even from Eli.

Susan criticized the detective for not conducting more interviews with her son. She also raised questions as to why police had only confiscated some of the knives from her kitchen and not others. She even got Costa to concede that approximately thirty law enforcement officers had “trampled” around Felix’s body that first night.

“That could be—not all at once I assume,” Costa said.

Susan also elicited admissions from the detective regarding Felix’s computer. Costa told the court that his officers found only the monitor and the keyboard in the trunk of Felix’s Saab. Susan suggested that her husband’s computer might have contained evidence to support her claims of spousal abuse. She also noted that police had not interviewed her eldest son, Adam, until October 2005, just days before her first, aborted murder trial got underway.

For all the salient points, Susan suddenly lost momentum when she veered into an outlandish inquiry that put her own mental stability in question. It was a pattern throughout the trial that repeatedly overshadowed her productive moments.

“Didn’t I accuse my husband of being a Mossad agent?” she asked, referring to an entry in her computer diary. “Did you follow up on that at all?”

The detective said he had not.

Susan next pointed to her written claim that Felix had betrayed his country by failing to turn over information provided to him about the
September 11 terrorist attacks. Susan later admitted that she gave that information to her husband while under hypnosis and in a trance.

“Did you report it to the FBI?” Susan asked Costa.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Do you believe there is no such thing as the Mossad?”

“Do I believe? Yes, they exist.”

“Normally, if there is some kind of treasonable activity, doesn’t that get reported?”

“Yes.”

“Are you aware that my husband believed he was a psychic?”

To raised eyebrows from jurors, Costa said he was not.

“Do you believe in psychic phenomenon?”

“No, not really.”

“No?” Susan was incredulous. “Are you aware that most Americans do?”

“No, I was not aware of that.”

“Did anybody tell you that I am supposed to be a medium?” she persisted.

Costa had not heard that, nor had his investigators looked into accusations that Felix intended to overthrow the U.S. government, as Susan claimed in her diary. This elicited jeers from the gallery. Still, Susan continued firing questions at the detective about her husband’s supposed anti-American activities. Claiming that two private investigators had looked into Felix’s dealings, she said that the pair had stumbled upon writings that detailed his plan to bring down the U.S. government and take over the country.

Susan grew surly when the detective suggested that Felix had several restraining orders against her at the time of his death. “To your recollection, how many restraining orders do you think my husband had…?”

“Maybe two,” Costa replied with an air of confidence.

“Oh really? Two? How about zero?” Susan snipped.

“At least one I can think of,” the detective assured the court.

Susan retorted in a mocking tone to chortles from the gallery. “Oh you do, do you?” She got him to admit that he was incorrect in his belief that Felix had gotten some type of order of protection as a result of his 911 calls to police.

Her offensive continued when the detective said that, during the course of his investigation, he never learned that Felix was violent. Susan pointed to two letters she wrote detailing Felix’s alleged abuse; one that was found on her computer hard drive and another that police confiscated from a safe hidden beneath the wet bar in the master bedroom.

“How’d you guys get my safe open?”

“Again, I don’t know anything about a safe and I don’t know who might have opened it,” Costa said, claiming that he did not know about the safe.

Susan handed the detective a copy of the letter that she claimed was locked inside the safe. “You don’t recall that the letter contains a history of my husband’s threats, violence…”

“Objection!” Sequeira interrupted.

“Ms. Polk, this is inappropriate,” Judge Brady said, sustaining the prosecutor’s objection.

“Did you investigate whether my husband did the things in that letter? For example, did you investigate whether he raped me when I was a patient in his care?”

“Objection!” the prosecutor jumped up again.

Talking over Sequeira, Susan quoted the evidence code.

“Do not argue with me,” Judge Brady snapped.

Brady’s admonishment did little to deter Susan. Handing the detective a crime scene photo depicting the safe lying open on her bed, she asked, “It’s not likely I’d keep my safe on the bed.”

“No,” the detective agreed.

Once Susan jarred his memory with the photo and had him read the letter while on the stand, he vaguely recalled entering it in his police report.

“So how can you say nothing ever came to your attention about spousal abuse,” Susan demanded. She was visibly annoyed with Costa and his claims.

“No other sources indicated your husband was violent,” the detective retorted. He admitted that he had not read Susan’s complete diary. To do so would have violated the terms of the search warrant that detectives
used to seize evidence from the house. Susan was incredulous, charging that detectives read the diary before the warrant was even signed.

In spite of this setback, Susan pressed on. At one point during the cross-examination, she trotted out police photos of the overturned ottoman that detectives claimed was kicked out from under Felix after he was struck on the head during the attack. Susan argued that the position of the ottoman, upside down and on the opposite end of the living room from its cover, proved her claim that Felix had used it as a weapon and thrown it at her early in the fight. Marching to an easel set up in the courtroom, she sketched a diagram of how police claimed to have found the furnishings. To Susan, it was apparent that officers had “staged” the crime scene.

“Why is the ottoman cover across the room from the ottoman at the ‘so-called’ crime scene?” Susan asked Costa. She was so thin in her black slacks that it looked as though they would fall from her hips if she moved too quickly.

Costa studied the photo. “It was due to the fight.”

“Is an altercation between a 110-pound woman and a 170-pound man a fight?”

“Yes,” the detective replied matter-of-factly.

“And how much do you weigh,” Susan asked.

“Too much,” Costa grinned. “Two-hundred-and-fifty-pounds.”

Susan asked that the clerk and bailiff bring out the ottoman for jurors. She continued to suggest that police had moved it in an attempt to bolster their theory of events in the guest cottage that October night.

Susan’s own omissions would prevent her from questioning Costa about the pepper spray she said she used on Felix that night. More than two years passed before she told authorities about the spray, and the window of opportunity for effectively testing the ottoman for residue had come and gone. Had the authorities been able to find evidence of the chemical, it would have given credence to Susan’s argument that Susan felt threatened by Felix that night, and she went to the guest house armed with the spray for protection.

Unable to use that argument, she was forced to focus on the ‘inconsistencies’ in the crime scene. She asked again about the bloody footprints she believed were made by “two right feet.”

“I think you’re wasting your time,” the detective told her. “It’s a question for a criminalist.”

“Oh really, you’re a detective. You’ve accused me of murder. I’m asking you for your professional opinion as a detective.”

Refocusing Costa’s attention on the photo, Susan intimated that the only way the bloody prints could have been made is if somebody had taken a shoe, “stuck it in some wet blood and then stamped them on the floor.”